Traditionally, a telephone system administrator had to manually associate an as-yet-unassociated (or newly installed) wire pair with a user's telephone number. For each new telephone (or each relocated telephone), this might involve several days of: pulling out to the proximity of the new user a new wire pair (or determining unallocated or previously allocated pairs among those already installed); and programming (or physically wiring) the user-to-wire pair association. Thus, manual association required coordination between the telephone service provider, the plant telecommunications department and the user. Accurate records seldom are, but should be, kept to track physical connections.
This invention takes as its object to overcome these shortcomings and to realize certain advantages presented below.